Yu Suzuki

In or out of VR, who is your bucket list developer you would love to interview? I know mine off the top of my head, so I'll say it.

It's you, Suzuki.

who I don't know if people listening will know that name, but he was another Sega guy just like Tetsuya Mizuguchi, created some of the most popular games of the 1980s and 90s.

So I'll just name a couple.

It was 2D focused, and that was because most of the console dudes making games for consoles at Sega in Japan were making two-dimensional games.

The 3D stuff was being done by Yu Suzuki, known for Virtua Racing, for Virtua Fighter, Virtua, insert blank, All the Model 1 and later Model 2 arcade hardware glory that Sega became very well known for in the arcade scene.

um, they weren't necessarily as worried about that because they, the, what Sato told beep 21, uh, was that if they made a 3d machine, they wouldn't be able to make games for it.

Cause none of their home console dudes know how to do 3d.

I wanted to sort of jump on the back of what you just said there, though.

You're saying that first party, we're using both processors.

But no less a person than you, Suzuki, very publicly said, and it was actually in Next Generation...

I think it was issue two or three.

I don't know if anybody recognizes the name Project Berkeley, which started as a development thing on the Sega Saturn.

I think it was developed originally as a RPG version of Virtua Fighter with Yu Suzuki and his team.

And then that would later be ported over to the Dreamcast and then became what we now know as Shenmue.

Oh,

And then, uh, just to go through the list of other ones, 'cause I thought this was interesting what all the different AM teams and different divisions of Sega split off into.

AM2 became Sega AM2, [laughs] headed by Yu Suzuki.

Not very creative on that name.

But AM3 became Hitmaker under Hisao Oguchi.

Yeah, yeah.

Incredibly friendly, much more so than when I met Yu Suzuki the same year, who's the designer behind Shenmue.

And if you listen to our other podcast, me and Wayne do our other podcast.

Yeah, I think we went into that story then, right? Yeah, I mean, every episode we talk about Ifutetsu Musukuchi and Yu Suzuki.

So, I mean, I think we've gotten to this about 10 minutes into this recording.

A day

look, we've got Yu

in to talk about making OutRun.

It's important.

Absolutely.

It 100% isn't.

There are other cars out there, other sports cars on the road, but you're not racing them, which is just, you know, a very used Suzuki thing to do.

He wasn't much of a gamer.

God, the mind boggles.

Come on, Seigo, you Suzuki.

Yeah, what's going on, man? What also makes me laugh is on the back it's got 5,800 yen.

So that's about 20, probably 27, 28 pounds.

I feel ripped off.

But yeah, originally.

So yeah, that's my Gameworks Yu Suzuki.

Great

And so let's get into it.

So Shenmue is a 1999 action adventure game created by Yu Suzuki and developed and published by Sega for the Dreamcast.

It was released in December 29th of 1999 in Japan, in November 7th, 2000 in America.

It follows the teenage martial artist Ryo Hazuki as he sets out in revenge for the murder of his father in 1980s Yok- Yokosuka, Japan.